What makes mHealth a great investment opportunity
Current trends & drivers of mHelalth
Creating a successful mHealth model
A scalable and profitable solution
That day is not too far away when your mobile assistant is likely to tell you the reason behind that niggling pain in your back. Your smartphone is expected to be your health advisor,all thanks to mobile health (mHealth)- the practice of medicine and public health supported by mobile devices.
As per PricewaterhouseCoopers, India ranks second among the developing economies in adopting mHealth.
A recent primary research study conducted by Wipro and the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) found a rapid end-user
demand for mHealth in India.
The mHealth Ecosystem: 2015 – 2030 study estimates that the mHealth market would have made nearly $18 billion in 2016 alone. In spite of roadblocks associated with regulation, patient adoption and confidentiality concerns,
the research forecasts additional growth at a CAGR of 40% over the next 5 years.
- Aravind Eye Hospital System’s mobile health units are renowned in their use of wireless technology.
- The Apollo Telemedicine Networking Foundation has over 70 telemedicine midpoints across India that enables
third-party contractors to reach out to rural areas.
- The Government has issued projects for a range of national telemedicine arrangements and structures,
even within oncology and disease monitoring.
A huge investment opportunity for medical professionals.
Despite this increasing adoption, India’s footprint in mHealth is tiny. With a largely
under-served rural population,there’s a huge uncaptured market that medical professionals to leverage.
As healthcare professionals look for ways to maximise their patient outreach while reducing expenses, many
view mHealth as the answer to achieve cost-effectiveness. Furthermore, mHealth provides a host of opportunities
to the pharma industry, varying from research and developmental pursuits to their fight against spurious medicines.
India’s healthcare troubles are aggravated by its elevated non-communicable illness burden.
Degenerative maladies are leading factors of demise and impairment in India and their share is predicted to
climb rapidly. This is where healthcare has the potential of developing mHealth programmes in two clear-cut market opportunities:
1. Access to healthcare can be extended to rural areas with services where there is restricted capacity.
2. Healthcare can be concentrated on the urban affluent who have the capacity to bear the cost of expensive monitoring utilities that can enrich their health.
Doctors can either invest in apps that provide access to health records, diagnosis, medication prescriptions etc.
or apps that assist in health management and monitoring, physician appointments etc.
The cost to build an app can range anywhere between $5,000 - $15,000. IT companies that build apps could very well deliver a complete, customised healthcare app within 6–8 weeks. The expenses to build a tailor-made medical app is dependent on a developer's rates, total extent and quality of the app design,
app functionality and additional features.
A Business Loan for Doctors with a high loan amount of Rs.20 lakhhelps physicians fund this investment and
cash on the booming mHealth market
With the advent of mHealth, patient treatmentcan go beyond the confines of conventional healthcare institutions
to treat patients wherever they are, while improving patient outcomes and bringing down costs.
• Technology innovation:Social networking, cloud computing and big data analytics are laying the
cornerstone for patients to get healthcare in not just high-priced medical centres and far-flung specialty clinics
but in their localities and surroundings.
• Smart mobility: Empowers patients to obtain greater charge of their online medical reports thereby,
improving their well-being.Thanks to smartphones,end-users are taking part in health-connected dialogue online.
• M-Health apps: Today, there are over 165,000 mHealth apps available in Apple iTunes and Android app stores,
according to a new study by the IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics.Health and wellness apps are
driving mobile health technology adoption and are altering lifestyle.
•Advanced mobile disease detection: Detection devices for blood pressure, pulse rate, etc. are now wirelessly
linked to smartphones with some facilities are being built into mobile devices
How doctors can take their practice to the next level
• Increasing consumer expectations: Patients will increasingly expect healthcare system to answer their queries within
an hour or a day.
• Growing cost consciousness: Patients are likely to expect better information and healthcare exchanges from
commercial sites and insurance providers.
• Demand for mobile services: Providers of mHealth solutions cantake a cue from their counterparts in other industries.
•Social networks:A broad platform for physicians for patient-centric experimentation as they share best
practices and encourage positive lifestyle change among peer groups.
• Fight counterfeit drugs: Through SMS, consumers can now check the authenticity of medications.
• The big data challenge: The more the quantity and quality of data, the more healthcare providers
and patients would benefit. According to research firm IDC, data is growing at an annual rate of 40% and the challenges
to improving healthcare lies in controlling the data. Big data poses challenges for analysts to detect, examine, incorporate,
and communicate with real-time information and connected programs. Problems may occur due to a lack of appropriate
intelligent tools, convenience and accurate training.
• Confidentiality and ‘Big Brother’fears: The rise of big data is bringing security concerns as there is a need for
data to only reachthe right people. With the recent spate of data hacking taking
place worldwide, the risk of exposing private healthcare information has never been greater.
• The bring-your-own-device (BYOD) challenge: Medicalorganisations grapple to secure data within their premises.
• The talent challenge: Very few people have the requisite knowledge in mobile technology to drive the development
of healthcare mobility as quickly as stakeholders would like.
• Emerging markets, emerging solutions- Unbalanced health infrastructure offers rural India and the
urban poor the most basic care. However, there is an increasing pressure on the government to raise healthcare spending,
thanks to the rapid economic growth driving citizens to demand for better health infrastructure and improved services.
Almost 32% of the mHealth professional respondents had the opinion thatas of June 2016, remote monitoring has the greatest
market potential in the mobile health app categories worldwide.
• Greater need and fewer options- Due to a paucity of physicians and much of the
population living in the countryside, medical care is often given by those with only the most basic training. In such cases,
mobile technology is the best and the only viable instrument to reach rural India.
• From technology to solutions worth buying - For mHealth to be adopted rapidly, there needs to be
services and products that appeal to citizens on price points.
For a successful mHealth model, mobile health applications must:
- encompass interoperability with detectors and mobile devices
- integrate current activities of patients
- provide intelligent andauthentic solutions
- enable data to be shared
- adopt practices to maximise ROI
- get feedbacks through a patient engagement